My first exposure to democracy was when I was a student at Jaedong Elementary School. My class had to elect a president.
The school was one of the earliest public education institutes in Korea, situated in the old residential zone of Seoul, in what is now Bukchon.
The principal, a man of small frame with a booming voice, constantly beseeched us to love our nation. During weekly assemblies, he used to display a faded, old national flag that the school had somehow preserved from the country’s colonial days.
The principal made all senior grade classes elect leaders by voting, as part of the democratic training of young students in the newly-independent country.
In the last classroom election before I left the school, I was one of three candidates nominated by our teacher. Out of modesty, I voted for one of the other nominees who was my best friend and he got elected.
As a student, I also watched the elections that happened in the adult society, which seemed like very important events. When reading newspapers, I spotted unfamiliar words in headlines -- vote-buying, ballot-stuffing, blackmailing and rigged counting -- and soon understood what they meant.
Despite former President Syngman Rhee’s dictatorship, elections were still believed to be opportunities for change. A bloody student uprising eventually brought Rhee down. The following period of democratic experimentation paved the way for a military coup, which many people initially welcomed as they had grown weary of the strife-torn Democratic Party, the leading opposition party at the time.
Generals and colonels banned civilian politics and then allowed its resumption after changing into civvies and forming a party. Coup leader Park Chung-hee’s 18-year reign effectively deprived the people of the right to elect their president through direct vote. His military successor Chun Doo-hwan tried hard to delay a return to “jikseonje,” or direct presidential election, in order to “peacefully” hand over power to his comrade Roh Tae-woo. Hence, the primary objective of pro-democracy movements in the 1980s was to reintroduce such direct voting.
Nationwide demonstrations forced the Chun clique to accept democratic reforms including jikseonje. In the direct presidential election late in 1987, the first in 16 years, Roh won due to a three-way split in the opposition. We called it “democratization” anyway and the 1987 Constitution maintained the national political framework over the next three decades.
During this chapter of modern Korean history, we boasted simultaneously achieving democracy and an advanced market economy, amid the adversity of armed confrontation with North Korea and the scarcity of natural resources.
In this spring of 2016, we realize the shattering of a fantasy, as we are witnessing a total corruption of partisan politics and a nearly complete paralysis of representative democracy. Coincidentally, national income has also shrank sizably.
What wrong have we done to face this catastrophic situation?
We elected presidents who invariably were disgraced during the latter half of their tenures due to the corruption of close associates and family members.
We, the voters, are to blame for choosing representatives who, while fattening their own privileges, increasingly neglected their mission of supporting the economy with timely legislations as all their energies were consumed by partisan conflicts.
Election is virtually all we can do to play a part in democracy.
All we are allowed in face of the consequences of our choices is remorse. Opposition lawmakers made filibuster speeches for 10 to 15 hours to deter plenary voting on the anti-terrorism bill. Meanwhile, parties run by the lawmakers we elected continued to divide into factions grouped not by policies and principles, but by loyalty to specific leaders, which generally corresponds to the regional dialects they speak.
In the run-up to the April 13 parliamentary polls, President Park Geun-hye had played a key role in keeping her own Saenuri Party in tatters by insisting on dropping disloyal members from party nomination. She called it the “politics of betrayal,” referring to those who had been critical of her major welfare policy. At the climax of the dispute between those anti-Park and pro-Park, party chair Kim Moo-sung refused to endorse the final list of nominees in order to save some of the renegades.
No less treacherous is the Minjoo Party which is run by a guest caretaker as its original leadership was unable to bind the main opposition group together due essentially to deep-rooted distrust between members based in the southeast and those in the southwest.
Kim Jong-in ousted some of the most radical members from party nomination, but had to compromise in the face of strong repercussion from the majority loyalists of the late president Roh Moo-hyun.
Elections are less than two weeks away. We have to go to the polls to exercise our rights, and fulfill our duty as citizens of this democratic republic, despite knowing that the gold-plated badge of National Assemblyman will be given to some individuals who put their personal and partisan interests ahead of national causes.
Since I became eligible to do so, I have never missed out on voting in either parliamentary or presidential elections, but this time I do not want to vote. This is not only because I know little of the candidates in my district where I moved to late last year, but because of the uselessness of the quadrennial ritual in making our lives better. My wife has the same thoughts about the election and our representative democracy.
Outside my home, there seem to be quite a few voters who share the same feelings. It is regrettable that the Constitution does not set a minimum required percentage of votes to win parliamentary seats, so it is impossible for the electorate to reject all candidates by not going to the polls. Voters are also unable to remove any National Assembly members once they have been elected, unlike the local autonomy system.
In our short history of democracy, elections have betrayed us.
Instead of patriots, nationwide polls have assembled a bunch of potential felons to oversee the nation and government. Their crime is breach of trust, negligence of official duty and worst of all -- destroying the ideals of many people who were taught since childhood that democracy is a good thing.
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. – Ed.